So, when Betsy Talbot of blog Married With Luggage offered to share the story of how she and her husband Warren saved enough for a five-year trip around the world in only two years, we jumped at the chance.

Have you ever thought about chucking it all and going to live on a deserted beach somewhere?

Of course you have; we all do. But then we turn off the alarm clock, drag ourselves out of bed, and head to the job that funds our everyday life.

But what would happen if you gave the idea some serious thought?

In 2008, my husband Warren and I decided to do just that: quit our jobs to travel around the world for one year. We both worked for almost 20 years in successful careers and accumulated all the things people usually do in that time: a home, car, furniture, a busy social life with many friends. As a childless-by-choice couple, we thought we had freedom, but were just as chained to our jobs and the status quo as anyone else.

It took the one-two punch of my 35-year-old brother’s freak heart attack, followed by a good friend’s brain aneurysm, to wake us up to the life we were living (or, more accurately, weren’t living) and prompt the question:

“If we knew we wouldn’t make it to our 40th birthdays, what would we do differently right now?”

That single inquiry highlighted every single thing we were doing that didn’t support our long-term dream of travel.

We had always spent a lot of our disposable income on travel, with local weekend getaways and bigger trips to Hawaii and Europe. We were very curious to see Antarctica, more of Europe, and to venture into Asia, something that just wasn't possible with only a week of vacation at a time. In fact, Warren took his last job just because of the insane frequency of travel and the knowledge we could build up an incredible amount of frequent flier miles for our personal travels.

Warren and I looked into each other’s eyes and knew instantly that we weren’t going to put our dreams off anymore.